Re: [PATCH] Try harder to find a remote when on a detached HEAD or non-tracking branch.

From: Marc Branchaud <marcnarc@xiplink.com>
Date: Jun 18, 2012, 21:40 UTC
Message-ID: <4FDFA030.7080408@xiplink.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vaa004j9f.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On 12-06-18 01:33 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> marcnarc@xiplink.com writes:
> 
>> From: Marc Branchaud <marcnarc@xiplink.com>
>>
>> get_default_remote() tries to use the checked-out branch's 'remote' config
>> value to figure out the remote's name.  This fails if there is no currently
>> checked-out branch (i.e. HEAD is detached) or if the checked-out branch
>> doesn't track a remote.  In these cases and the function would just fall
>> back to "origin".
>>
>> Instead, let's use the first remote listed in the configuration, and fall
>> back to "origin" only if we don't find any configured remotes.
> 
> I admit that I wouldn't do anything that relies on any remote to be
> used while on detached head myself, so in that sense I am a biased
> audience, but guessing (or not guessing and blindly assuming
> 'origin') feels wrong, and trying even harder to come up with an
> even wilder guess feels even more wrong.

OK, but what would be right? AFAIK git doesn't have any real way of designating an official default remote. It seems to me that the first one in the config is actually better than just using "origin". At least, that remote seems very likely to be the one used when the repo was cloned.

> Shouldn't we be erroring out instead?

That would be bad for our situation. As I said, our automated build system uses detached HEADs a lot. Erroring-out in this case would break us. It's really only the near-ubiquity of the name "origin" that has kept things working so far.

But we finally ran into a situation where someone used "git clone -o", and that seems to have broken relative-path submodules in some situations. (I would not be at all surprised if "git clone -o" breaks an assortment of other features, too. I think there are a few places in the code where "origin" is presumed to be a valid remote name, and also the one the user wants to use.)

M.